When you say titles were offered for Zara and Peter, do you mean HRH/prince? Or a peerage? If it's the former, I owe the Queen an apology, because I've been thinking she was sticking to the 1917 LP and that on this score she is an appallingly bad grandmother.

No HRH was offered to anyone.

Mark Philips was offered a peerage on marriage to Princess Anne and he refused it, in consultation with his wife and future mother-in-law (the Queen). As the father didn't have any title the children don't get any title either.

Princess Margaret's husband was given a title, by the present Queen, so her nephew and niece have the courtesy titles that go with being the children of an Earl.

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Anyway if indeed an HRH/prince was offered and Anne declined, I don't like that move on Anne's part.

Just as Edward and Sophie have decided that Louise isn't to use the HRH (and there is a lot of debate about whether the fact that the Queen has made her will known is enough to deny Louise the HRH - personally I am not sure) Anne decided that her children would be styled as the children of the daughter of a monarch who wasn't married to a peer of the realm. Anne made a decision after careful thought about the futures of her children.

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She should have asked for Peter and Zara to decide for themselves at age of majority.

Once it was decided by Anne and Mark that Mark not have a title there was no chance for Peter and Zara to make a decision as Mark had already made that decision - he wasn't going to have a title and therefore his children don't have a title.

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As it stands, if it's true that Zara wants the HRH, as a practical matter she cannot take it, even if the Queen offered.

Under the 1917 Zara has never been entitled to the HRH as she is a descendent of a daughter not a son of the monarch.

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Oh and I've assumed all along that Zara and Peter will both get peerages when they marry, am I wrong?

There is no suggestion that I have ever seen that they will get titles. I would be extremely surprised if either of them did so.

I don't think the Queen will give titles to any of her grandchildren at marriage except for William and Harry as they will, in the fullness of time, they will be the children of the monarch.

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By the way, if the Queen offered HRH to Peter and Zara, it seems the 1917 LP is completely dead now.

She never offered the HRH to Peter and Zara because the 1917 LPs exclude them as they are her daughter's children.

Just the same as Margaret's children can't get the HRH under the 1917 LPs (and Margaret is also the daughter of a monarch). In fact if special LPs weren't issued in 1948 Prince Charles would have been born as a Lord and not an HRH Prince. In this special circumstance an exception was made to the 1917 LPs allowing for the children of the daughter of a monarch to be HRH from birth.

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She should formally declare it dead, if this hasn't been done already, since the sexism in that document is just appalling. Especially in light of the fact that Anne is the best of her generation.

The 1917 LPs are certainly not dead and are very much in force and are applied. ALL LPs are sexist - they pretty well all only allow for male inheritance, with one or two notable exceptions such as Mountbatten. e.g. Prince Andrew's daughters can't inherit his Dukedom of York and nor can Louise inherit her father's Earldom. Why make an issue of the 1917 LPs which were designed to reduce the number of HRHs and as females are in the line of succession below their brothers, regardless of birth order, it makes sense to restrict the HRH to one less generation than for the males.

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Imho common law is not being applied, it's being violated. The LP denying Wallis the HRH was probably not legally valid and the Queen was told as much; it just was never challenged because no one wanted to dwell on the issue.

As the monarch has the power to issue LPs covering titles it was certainly within the monarch's power to issue the LPs that were issued for the Duke of Windsor title, including the fact that it was not a title that covered the wife - unusual yes but illegal I doubt it.

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The problem I can't get around is that courtesy titles are not a grant of the sovereign, they are a consequence of being in a certain relationship to someone who holds a substantive dignity, which may or may not have been conferred by the sovereign.

Courtesy titles are just that - a courtesy that indicates your relationship to a particular person e.g. Viscount Linley is NOT a peer of the realm, even if it sounds as if he is. His Viscountancy simply indicates that he is the heir to his father's title - Earl Snowdon. He is, of course, the grandson of a monarch but not an HRH any more than Zara or Peter are.

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As was noted during the time, Wallis is automatically HRH upon marriage; for that not to happen, Edward would have to lose his HRH.

No - as the LPs creating the Duke of Windsor title made a special exception Wallis was not automatically an HRH.

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As a matter of common law. The Queen cannot just take away Wallis's HRH because it doesn't exist, it would be like trying to steal the Mona Lisa from MoMA.

The Queen didn't take away the HRH - Wallis was married for nearly 15 years before the Queen became Queen. George VI issued the relevant LPs restricting the HRH to the Duke alone and not to his wife, or his children, which under the 1917 LPs were also entitled to it. In other words George specifically issued new LPs to cover his brother's situation and made it different to those normally issued. The present Queen could issue similar LPs if she so chose but she hasn't done so.

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My take on this is that it seems like a blatantly illegal action was allowed during a moment of crisis, and somehow established itself as a precedent. (That seems to happen a lot everywhere.)

There was discussion over whether or not the abdication meant that Edward has actually lost ALL his titles and styles as a royal or whether he had kept some. As the interpretation was that he had given up all styles and titles he had to be recreated HRH and therefore the LPs creating him Duke of Windsor clearly stated that it applied only to him. It would have meant that any wife of his wouldn't get the HRH by the way - not just Wallis.

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But as a matter of law, Sarah Ferguson, and Diana also, were both deprived of a common law benefit that should stand even against the sovereign.

No they weren't.

They gained the HRH because they were the wives of HRH and as that came with the marriage it went with the divorce.

They have kept the style of divorced wives of peers, just like any other divorced wife of a peer. The divorced wife of a Duke ceases to be Your Grace but also keeps the right to use the Duchess of xxx as part of their name like Diana and Sarah did.

As Diana and Sarah were the first, since 1917, to divorce the Queen issued LPs to clarify the situation - the HRH came with the marriage and left with the divorce but the rest of the style was the same as for any other divorced wife of a peer.

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Well -- if the Queen had followed the common law principles that ordinarily govern courtesy titles, Diana is HRH The Princess of Wales after divorce and this situation never arises in the first place.

No - the common law precedent was the the wife of the peer loses any style that relates to address e.g. HRH, Your Grace but keeps the right to use their Christian name and the title Duchess/Princess/Countess etc of xxx. Hence Diana, Princess of Wales, Sarah, Duchess of York - no The in there. The 'The' is reserved for the actual wife not the divorced wife.

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The precedent problem was created by the Queen's decision to issue the new rule that you lose HRH when you divorce.

The precedent problem was created because Diana was the mother of the future king and for no other reason. Sarah doesn't have that precedece at all and she also lost the HRH.

The rule wasn't new at all - it had been applying to Duchesses etc for years. What she did was clarify it for divorced wives of HRHs - as there hadn't been one since 1917 it was necessary to clarify the divorced status of her ex-daughters-in-law.

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But Prince(ss) of Wales is not a peerage. It's odd to me it should be treated as analogous to the dukedom of York rather than HRH.

As Burke's Peerage refers to the Prince of Wales as a peerage I suspect that it is. The title Prince of Wales is the most senior title of Prince Charles so of course Diana continued to use that title after her divorce. To start calling herself Diana, Duchess of Cornwall would have had people really confused.

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Actually does anyone know if Diana/Sarah were entitled to call themselves Princess Charles/Andrew after divorce?

I believe that they are not entitled to use the Princess Charles/Andrew after divorced as they are just that divorced and therefore use the divorced form in the same way as other divorced wives of peers do.

Lots of thanks to Chrissy57 for her outstanding answers. It is clear that the titulature in the royal houses and the nobility, in essence not so complicated at all, is a problem for many, the media not excluded.

Hmm. I have quibbles with much of what you say, Chrissy. Rather than going point by point, let me couch it in terms of this which I just saw in today's Mail (web):

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Camilla, who is 60 today, has told close friends she wants to be known as the princess consort when Prince Charles becomes king.

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But Camilla's decision to take the title princess consort throws up a constitutional problem which may only be resolved by legislation.

Under current law, wives must take the rank of their husbands. There is no precedent for having a king married to a wife who is not queen.

The Department of Constitutional Affairs has always insisted she will become queen unless Parliament legislates to strip her of the right to the title. Any change to her status may also have to be approved by the 17 parliaments in Commonwealth countries where the new king will be head of state.

To me that settles it -- Wallis was robbed, the LP denying her the HRH was never legally valid. And if the common law custom that says a woman takes her husband's dignity is valid, so too must be the related custom, that a divorced woman retains her husband's dignity.

The thing is, in the absence of an authority to the contrary, even the sovereign is bound by the common laws that govern all Britons and vice versa. So if a novel situation arises, such as the heir presumptive divorcing, the sovereign is governed by existing laws, if there are any. And laws do exist which spell out what happens when you marry and when you divorce.

The fact that a sovereign must issue an LP for something to come about, does not mean the sovereign has unfettered authority as to whether to issue the LP. There are mandatory royal prerogatives and elective ones; the sovereign cannot deny a writ of summons to someone who meets the requirements for succeeding to a peerage for example, while writs of acceleration are purely elective.

Even if that were not so, an LP is not required for courtesy titles to be used, though they are sometimes issued. I know of only one way a courtesy title can be legally denied, and the sovereign is not involved.

Does any of this make sense? Some of these issues were raised when Charles could not as a practical matter marry at St. George's.

PS - Prince of Wales is not a peerage, and the fact that it's in Burke's does not mean that it is; Burke's also lists baronetcies. PoW fails the peerage test on every level. I think it has to be understood as an honorific formulated for a position that already existed -- it's just a style, like HRH. Don't forget, a legal fiction had to be created for this office to come about at all.

I believe that they are not entitled to use the Princess Charles/Andrew after divorced as they are just that divorced and therefore use the divorced form in the same way as other divorced wives of peers do.

If Prince and Princess Michael of Kent divorced, how would she be addressed?

The wife of the King must be Queen Consort as there is no other style or title for her use. A very different situation than being both a princess of the UK and a duchess by virtue of marriage.

Couldn't she style herself The Duchess of Lancaster? But I see your point, this is not a good example.

I'm sorry I barged in here and started rambling to no point, but I think I've found a way to express this coherently.

In the Wallis case, the Yorks wanted to deny Wallis the HRH. Legal opinion was unanimous: the sovereign does not have that power. That a woman who marries takes her husband's rank is well-settled; whatever Edward has, Wallis gets. Edward is HRH. Therefore Wallis is HRH. The only way to stop it is to take away Edward's HRH.

But the sovereign insisted that a way be found for Edward to remain HRH while Wallis does not become one. An exchange of memos between legal experts at Parliament and Buckingham jury-rigged a justification that might get to the desired result:

1. "HRH" is a style that describes the substantive dignity of being in the line of succession in the degree specified by the 1917 LP.
2. By abdicating, Edward gave up his place in the line of succession and hence the substantive dignity that gave him the right to use the "HRH".
3. Edward is therefore no longer entitled to use the HRH style, but since the 1917 grants the style to a son of the sovereign, and nothing can change the fact that Edward was born the son of a sovereign, he might continue to use the HRH style.
4. It is to be understood however that since Edward no longer has an absolute claim to the HRH by virtue of the substantive dignity of being in the line of succession, his use of the style after Abdication is by gift of the sovereign under the terms of the 1917 LP.
5. Since Edward's HRH is a gift and not an entitlement, and since Common Law is clear that you cannot derive a greater benefit from a lesser, Wallis's marital courtesy claim to HRH is no less conditional than Edwards.
6. Therefore it is up to the sovereign whether or not Wallis gets HRH.

That's what happened. It was never the case that the sovereign has any control over marital courtesy titles by virtue of being the font of honour, or because abdication created a situation not contemplated by law. The principle that a woman takes her husband's rank, and that Wallis is entitled to a valid HRH, was affirmed at the outset and was never questioned. A defect had to be found in Edward's HRH.

It was not, Chrissy, that Edward forfeited his HRH and the sovereign reissued it with the caveat that it doesn't go to Wallis; the sovereign does not have that power. The HRH Edward got in effect carried no rank, which is what the wife is entitled to, and that's why it could be denied.

How do we get from there, to Sarah and Diana losing HRH, when that a woman keeps her husband's rank upon divorce is no less well-settled than that she takes it upon marriage?

Chrissy notes that HRH might work like "Her Grace" being lost by the divorced wife of a duke. But in that example the woman keeps the rank of her husband, by taking the dukedom as her surname. The requirement is not identical language, the requirement is the same rank.

But Sarah and Diana, they lost their rank despite no defects in the HRH's of their husbands. That Diana kept some form of the Wales desigation isn't enough, by the logic of the Wallis case, because only HRH describes the rank of being in the line of succession.

There is no question The Duke had the right, as a son of George V, to remain HRH despite the Abdication so long as The Sovereign continued to recognize him as such. The problem with denying Wallis the title was in allowing Edward to retain it himself, which was a mistake on the King's part. There was no such thing as a morganatic marriage in Great Britain and, yet, it was created by the Crown and the Government in 1937 to punish Edward for marrying her after giving up the throne.

On the other hand, it was clear from reviewing the letters patent of George II, George III, Victoria and Edward VII on conferring HRH and Prince/Princess of the UK that the intent was to grant recognition to those members of the royal family in close succession to the throne. Obviously, there was no thought given to a divorce or abdication at that time, so it was reasonable to assume new letters patent could be issued to deal with those situations.

No, she'd have been known as Princess [Name] of Wales while Charles was Prince of Wales and then she'd have just been The Princess [Name] once he became King. The Prince of Wales title is reserved for sons.

No, she'd have been known as Princess [Name] of Wales while Charles was Prince of Wales and then she'd have just been The Princess [Name] once he became King. The Prince of Wales title is reserved for sons.

What will happen if Prince William and Harry have children, what will their titles be?

__________________"Some people make headlines, while others make history."

Completly unrelated but I was wondering if Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester should not have been corectly referred to as HRH The Princess Henry, Duchess of Gloucester or HRH The Dowager Duchess of Gloucester.

I understand why Princess Marina adopted this style after all she was a Princess in her own right,Alice was on The Lady Alice Montague-Douglas-Scot before her marriage.

I was under the impression that only princess of the Blood Royal could be know as HRH (The) Princess Own Name (Anne, Alexandra, Margaret, Beatrice etc.) while others were HRH (The) Princess husbands name (Micheal of Kent etc.)

While I am aware that Her Majesty approved of the style Her Royal Highness adopted should correct form, social etiquette precedent and Buckingham Palace's obsession with doing things properly not have dictated that she remain The Princess Henry after all a widow remains Mrs. John Smith while only a divorcee is correctly Mrs. Jane Smith.

Completly unrelated but I was wondering if Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester should not have been corectly referred to as HRH The Princess Henry, Duchess of Gloucester or HRH The Dowager Duchess of Gloucester.

You're correct. She wanted to differentiate herself from the new Duchess of Gloucester, but didn't care for the 'Dowager' title. The Queen allowed her aunt to adopt a similiar style as used by the Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent.